The Trade Counsel – Exploiting “Skewed” Early Season Pitching Lines

by Simon Jones

At the time of writing we’ve had 10 days of Major League play and the season is slowly starting to take shape. The first few weeks of a season are always difficult as you wait for players roles to be defined and to get a clear indication of a player’s true form against small sample sizes.

One thing that has jumped out at me thus far has been a host of strange starting pitching performances. There have been a few starts where there were few or no earned runs, but the pitching line looked ugly in pretty much every other way. There were some others where the starter was racking up strikeouts with very few walks, yet they were getting hit hard and conceding runs. It raised a few questions on how we perceive pitchers’ performances, and how we can use that to our advantage when trying to put together fantasy trade offers.

When we look at hitting in our fantasy leagues, or indeed within a real life box score, I think we’re all pretty good at sifting out the value from a player’s stat line. So we can look at a player and take note of the relative value of him getting 2 SB but going 0 for 4, and compare it to another who hits 2 HR or another who just goes 4-4. However when we look at a starting pitcher’s line, everything turns a bit muddy.

I play in leagues where starting pitchers can accumulate stats in categories such as W, QS, IP, K, K/9, K/BB, ERA and WHIP, and I’m sure many of you play in leagues that use some other tweaks on these scoring setups. However, whenever you hear phrases such as “pitched a gem” or “had a great performance” regarding a starter, it normally revolves around one thing – earned runs.

Let’s consider a few of the pitching lines from the first few days of the season:

Wade Miley – 5.0 IP, 1 H, 5 K, 7 BB, 0 ER
Vince Velasquez – 4.0 IP, 5 H, 10 K, 3 BB, 4 ER
Jon Gray – 5.1 IP, 4 H, 1 K, 3 BB, 1 ER
Wily Peralta – 6.0 IP, 5 H, 7 K, 4 BB, 3 ER
Hisashi Iwakuma – 6.0 IP, 2 H, 2 K, 3 BB, 1 ER
Jake Arieta – 7.0 IP, 3 H, 10 K, 2 BB, 3 ER

In real life baseball, a club probably is only concerned with the runs a pitcher concedes (other than the W/L), and would happily have every pitcher put up a line like Iwakuma, or even Miley. However in the fantasy world we have to remember that earned runs directly impact only one or two categories (depending on whether your league employs QS). Given the way we see pitching reported in the press it’s only natural that sub-consciously we attach more weight to earned runs and ERA than any other category, where we really know that each category should carry the same importance. In most fantasy league set-ups the Arrieta start will be more valuable than all the others, even though he lost out to Miley, Gray and Iwakuma in the ERA category.

To this end I often try to use ERA as a bargaining tool in pitching trades, especially when other peripherals are telling a different story. If Jeremy Hellickson puts together another low ER start at the weekend, then he will be firmly on my trade block,using him as trade bait to try and acquire a player who I perceive has better ongoing value. Similarly I’ll be keeping an eye on the performances of J.A. Happ and Sean Manaea in deeper leagues to see if there is a buy low opportunity.

That’s what trading is all about, isn’t?  Exploit the “misleading” numbers and cash in for long-term value.  There are chances to buy in the early season, try to take advantage of them.

The Trade Counsel is a weekly trade column – please leave feedback or any trade questions below.